When All Is Said And Done
by Nightwitch87
Summary: Post "Undercover". "Nights were different." After returning from Sealview,Olivia is left alone with her thoughts.Elliot wants to be supportive, but there are some things which are hard to say. Contains sexual assault theme and descriptions.PLEASE REVIEW!
1. Olivia

Disclaimer: The great series _Law and Order: Special Victims Unit_, now in its 11th season, was created by Dick Wolf. Consequently, I do not have copyrights, and I am merely writing this for personal entertainment with no intention of deriving profit from it.

Background: This is set after the Season 9 episode 'Undercover', where Olivia works as an undercover cop at Sealview Prison to arrest a corrections officer, and things get dangerous. This takes place right after Harris has been arrested for good. I thought the scene at her desk before was well-done and I can see why she would be reluctant to talk to Elliot about this, but at the same time...I missed it. As Neil Baer once said, Elliot often embodies the rage, and it seems to me that they complement each other to a point where they often don't need to use many words. This short fiction will consist of two parts.

**When All Is Said and Done**

Nights were different. There was no doubt about it. During the day, things could be tucked away, kept in a separate folder, rationalized. But when darkness came, so did...well, darkness. That basic human fear of not being able to see, and the unbearable hours of silence. What did you come home to? The job had been done, Harris was on the other side of the iron grate this time, all reports had been written, case closed. Case closed.

Olivia was sitting on the couch in her dimly lit apartment, her legs tucked up on the sofa. She was just fine. Her living room had been tidied. Her kitchen had been cleaned, although there wasn't much to clean, considering she hardly cooked. Her sheets had been changed. Her laundry was in the washing machine she'd invested in –a small luxury in a New York City apartment- spinning, which always caused the floor around it to vibrate. The entire place was looking like it usually did – comfortable, but somewhat empty. She really should get a plant. There was some fresh Chinese take-out in her fridge, but she didn't feel like eating. She was tired, but she didn't feel like sleeping. She had flipped through the various TV channels, too, but found it hard to focus on some medical drama. So it had been discarded, along with a magazine she had bought a week or so ago, an impulse purchase. She was far too exhausted to read, and couldn't seem to concentrate on anything. The only thing in her hands now were some bills, which she was sorting by priority. More or less.

She was angry with Cragen for sending her home early today. Of course he was right, this was the usual procedure after an undercover assignment, and he had already kept her on the job for the entire Harris arrest, and had let her check up on Ashley again. But that look he had given her, that concern, the request she speak to Huang, telling her to 'take a couple of days off'... This was not what she needed. She needed to do something. A glance at the clock on her wall told her it was 9.36pm. She didn't want to go to bed.

She jumped as her washing machine stopped spinning abruptly, and started to fill with water again. Damn it, Olivia. It's only a washing machine. She bent down to pick up a sheet of paper which had slipped from her lap, wincing at the sharp pain in her abdomen. It still hurt where his baton had hit her. Every inch of it, all over. And suddenly, with her head down, she was there again, in the basement, on the mattress, against the wall, chained to the door. _'I'm gonna take my time with you.' She flew on the mattress with her arms behind her._ _'You must like it rough.' His erection grinding into her from behind, his breath on her neck. His hands on her head, bringing it closer. The smell of him, putrid and sweaty, so close to her face. 'Shut up, bitch!'_

She felt dizzy as she sat back up. Her palms were sweating, her breath flat and racing. Breathe, deeply. Stay grounded. Stay. Notice the colours in the room. She knew the routine for working with victims under acute stress. But she was fine now. She was a detective after all, and in her years with SVU, she'd seen the most horrific things. She hadn't really been raped, either, so there was no reason why she shouldn't be able to cope with this. Worse things happened to people. She was a detective, with physical training, and she was supposed to be in control.

Still, things were different at night. She was alone. She wished her mother were alive so she could talk to her. But what would her mother have to offer? Drinking was not going to be her coping method. In a way, Elliot was the only close person she had left. Go figure. She worried sometimes that their friendship would get in the way of their job, that she felt too attached, that he was spending too much time away from his family. And really, after working shifts together on a day-to-day basis, you needed some time apart.

She couldn't tell him about the basement. He had asked, of course, but in the hope of hearing her say everything was all right. In the hope of being able to go home and hold his little boy without having all that ugliness follow him, as she knew it did. As it did for her. They could talk about anything, but there were things that didn't need to be said, and then there were things that were hard to say out loud when they referred to you personally. She wanted to remain his partner, someone who had your back, not a victim. If she became a victim, he would look at her differently, speak to her in his gentle crime victim voice, and constantly ask her if she was okay. They wouldn't be equals anymore, and he would feel obliged to watch out for her. She didn't want that. She just wanted things to be normal. But what did she always tell her crime victims? 'Things will never go back to the way they were.' That, and 'talk about it'. She hoped she was wrong.

Olivia was startled again by the sound of the buzzer. When you speak of the devil...or 'think', in this case. She uncurled her legs and got up carefully, approaching her control panel. The red light flashed. She pressed the button. 'Hello?'

'Hey Liv, it's me. Elliot.' That really needed explaining. 'Can I come up?'

**To be continued...**


	2. Elliot

Something was different. He just knew it as he was walking down this dark hallway. Sure, they'd had rough cases before. As far as he was concerned, there wasn't such a thing as an 'easy' sexually motivated crime. Sealview was a prison, a rat hole of a prison, so obviously, this hadn't been an 'average' job. He'd been against it from the start, or at least from when he had heard about it...not from Olivia. It was the silence that surrounded details of her undercover work, the seclusion of Olivia and Fin inside the fences of Sealview that gnawed at him. Finding out that Harris was not only a rapist, but a killer, too. He had been outside, out of control, unable to get them out in time for the lock-down. He hadn't had her back, which was what partners were supposed to do. He hadn't even been able to get a hold of the report afterwards.

Most of all, however, it was her hesitation that bugged him, the moment of softening, then the generic reassurance that 'nothing' had happened. Something always happened. He had let her get away with the answer at the time, with the phone call, the case still being open and all. There were things you'd rather forget than talk about. He got it. Hell, he'd invented the practice of avoidance. But the way she'd clammed up reminded him too much of the people he saw on a day-to-day basis. Harris was a murdering rapist, and he didn't even want to think further than that. He didn't like his gut feeling, the possibilities the SVU cop part of him came up with.

Elliot knocked on the door quietly. He just wanted to make sure she was okay. Nothing else. It didn't take her long to open. 'Hey, you really are an expert at dodging diaper duty.'

'Kid's asleep, what can I say. My sweet lullabies do their job.'

She smiled wanly as she ushered him inside, locking the door after him. Her apartment was clean as always, although he couldn't remember when he'd last been around. 'Really, shouldn't you be home with Kathy?'

He shook his head. 'Not right now. Kathy's all right with this.' They sat down on the sofa, him putting his arm up on the back. 'I didn't see you earlier; you must have left suddenly.'

'Yeah, figured I'd catch up on some sleep.'

'Been able to sleep?' He studied her attentively. She had changed into track pants and a loose shirt – comfy clothes. Her legs were curled up on the couch in a relaxed manner, but she had been careful in sitting down, had put a pillow behind her back. Her short hair was ruffled, as it got after being towel dried. She wasn't wearing make-up anymore, which seemed to bring out the bruise on her cheek more in spite of the dim light. There were bruises on her wrists too, he noticed, which had to be from the handcuffs. The dark shadows under her eyes were a toll of everything that had been going on. She was worn out.

Olivia shrugged. 'You know.'

'That's a no.'

She didn't say anything, until their silence was interrupted by the rumbling of a washing machine which started its spinning cycle.

He cleared his throat. 'Kathy was wondering if you'd like to join us for dinner sometime. Nothing fancy, but I told her you'd be happy with eggs on toast.'

'I'm fine, El.' She looked at him firmly while she said it. Unreadable.

'Are you?'

'I will be. I'm a big girl.'

'I know.' He paused. 'Liv, I was...' ...scared. Why were some things impossible to say? The question that had been burning at the back of his mind for the past couple of days wouldn't come across his lips. 'What happened in the basement?'

'Please don't.' Her expression changed into something more fearful, then irritated, her lips pressed tightly together. 'I don't want to talk about it. There's just no point.'

'Okay.' Elliot wanted desperately to keep pushing, to insist that she should talk about it, but there were things that were hard to balance with a friend. 'Do you want me to leave?'

'You should be home with your family.'

'That wasn't my question.'

She hesitated. 'Let's just talk about something else. Not work.'

'All right. How about those Knicks.'

'How's the baby?' she asked.

'Eli's great.' He smirked at the thought of his youngest, his boy. 'Lazy. If you put him down on his blanket with his toys away from him, he won't try and move there...he'll just pull the blanket towards him.'

She smiled. 'Like father, like son.'

'Kathy calls it "lazy"; I call it "clever".'

'She's got to be stressed at the moment.'

'Says she wishes I'd work less.'

'And Kathleen and the others?'

'Doing all right.' He wasn't sure what to tell her. It was strange that the conversation was now about him. 'They make great babysitters now that they're older.'

Olivia nodded, running one hand through her brown hair. 'I bet.' Her eyes were glassy, a look he recognized from their most draining times.

'Have you eaten?'

'Yeah. You?'

'Yeah.' There was an awkward pause, and he tried not to stare too much at her, focusing on the pile of papers on her coffee table instead. So the moment she got a minute to herself, she used it to sort out her personal business. Typical.

'He didn't rape me' she suddenly stated matter-of-factly. 'Just thought you should know that.'

He exhaled a deep breath. 'Good.' He was incredibly relieved to hear his worst suspicion disconfirmed, the strength of which he hadn't even realized until now. 'Good.'

'Fin got there in time.'

In time? He'd tried. Images began to form in Elliot's mind, images he saw every day on the job, but which usually had unfamiliar faces on them. 'What did he do to you?' In his mind, it wasn't the pronoun 'he' he used for Harris, but he had to stay calm. He didn't want to spook her out of talking.

'You don't need to hear the details. It's over.'

'Doesn't seem like it's over for you.'

'What do you expect? It was an undercover prison assignment.'

'And obviously, something happened. You can tell me; it's okay.'

'It's not okay. It's anything but okay.'

He felt a small sting, and he wasn't sure if it was because she wouldn't talk to him, or because he now knew that it wasn't 'fine'. He tried to reassure himself that whatever it was, attempted rape, attempted murder – it remained 'attempted'. They'd both been hurt on the job before. 'Look, if this is going to affect our work then I need to-'

'Don't you question my abilities as a cop!' she snapped defensively.

'I wasn't!' He looked at her bewildered. 'Jeez, what the hell is going on with you?'

'I'm doing my job, so no need to look over your shoulder.'

The 'over your shoulder' thing sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn't remember where he'd heard it. What a silly comment, of course he'd always be looking over his shoulder, anyway. She would, too. 'Fine.' He didn't know what else to say. When she was like this, one of them would usually just walk off. But he couldn't. He just couldn't. Should he? He needed to know. He needed to give her space. He needed to know.

Olivia was staring at the wall behind him, at a distant spot, with a stern expression on her face. She seemed so far off in her own world that it surprised him to hear her speak again. 'He...managed to isolate me from the group. I let him isolate me. I was caught off guard; I realized too late where we were going. I was handcuffed. We went to a room with a mattress. He pushed me on the mattress. I jumped back up. He then proceeded to try and rape me various times. He was unsuccessful.' Her voice sounded foreign, unnatural and emotionless, just like her choice of words. She was giving him a clinical description of the events, like one of her statements in court. Simple sentences, but insufficient detail to put the case together. 'He opened my handcuffs. I defended myself. I got away. But there was no way out. I...he found me. There was violence. He said he was going to kill me. He handcuffed me to the door. He attempted to...assault me. Suddenly, Fin was there.' She took a shaky breath, her voice losing its volume. 'It was close.'

'God, Liv...' He tried to process her words, but his heart was racing, and he had to swallow. There were things he was sadly used to hearing, but it was different to hear them from someone he cared deeply about. Different to hear them from his partner, one of the most important people in his life, who was there every day. It was sickening, like imagining one of his kids hurt. He didn't want to hear these things. 'That's terrible. I didn't realize...'

He scooted closer, reached out and took her hand in his, cradling it gently, moving his thumb in circles. The touch seemed to bring her back and suddenly, her eyes filled with tears. The Marine part of him wanted to find Harris in prison, grab a blunt knife and castrate him personally. The father of five kids part of him just wanted to hold Olivia in his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right. But the rational part of him, Detective Stabler, knew that anything related to physical contact was difficult, sensitive, knew that this was Detective Benson.

'I screamed' she said, tears rolling down her face now. 'I screamed so much. I knew it probably turned him on; I knew I needed to keep my mouth shut. I ran, too. I hid from him like some...I should have known better. I wasn't handcuffed anymore. I should have been able to overwhelm him. Instead, I screamed for help.'

'Which was the only thing to do. The right thing to do.' It worried and irritated him to hear her take this upon herself. 'Liv, he had you down in the basement with him behind locked doors. He was _armed_. There's nothing you could have done.'

'I shouldn't have gone with him. I'm a cop, Elliot, I'm supposed to know better!'

'You weren't a cop in there. You were a prisoner.'

Olivia shook her head. 'I'm trained. I should have put up more of a fight.'

'Don't do this. Don't blame yourself. You know it's his fault, not yours. Never the victim's.'

'I'm not a victim!' She glared at him, her dark eyes sparkling, but he refused to let go of her hand. 'He never got around to anything. But when he beat me, I just folded, can you believe it? Waiting for Fin to come to the rescue like-'

'Fin was supposed to have your back!' He hadn't meant to interrupt her, but the mentioning of Fin bothered him. Fin, her ally in all this, who hadn't gotten them out, but who got there 'in time'. 'He was supposed to be there, anyway.'

'It wasn't his fault.'

'Or yours! You survived, that's what matters. You did what you had to do. You survived.' He squeezed her hand, watching her struggle and look away again. It hurt him to see her like this, to see this vulnerability. She was always so strong. It hurt to imagine 'what if...', to think of how close it had been. How she might not be here now. And he hadn't been there.

'He told me he'd kill me if I bit him' she said quietly, as if to no one in particular.

'What?' It took him a moment to piece the information together in his mind. To grasp what it implied. It was the missing puzzle piece, the thing that had been there somewhere, at the back of his mind. The mole. So this was what 'close' meant. A wave of disgust hit him. 'That bastard. That fucking bastard.' He wanted to kill him. Not quickly, not with a single shot, but slowly.

'It just went on and on.' She shuddered, fighting for composure. 'On and on. And he enjoyed it. Like a cat...playing...It aroused him when I struggled. I could feel it. When I got to the locked door, I was sure it was over. All over. I wasn't going to get out. Ever. I was afraid. I thought of Mom. I thought 'so this is what it's like'. I- I wanted it to be over.'

'It's over now' Elliot replied, horrified. Part of him wanted it to be, wanted to fix everything, but he knew he couldn't make it all better just like that. He knew this would stick. 'You're safe.'

She met his gaze, tired and resigned. 'It's not over. It's not just Harris. In that prison, sex is traded for drugs. They enjoy feeling the prisoners up, make a spectacle of humiliating them. Nights are called the time for flat backing, because the guards like to take the women down there...into the basement...'

'Have you told Casey about this?'

'I have. She said it's the case in many prisons and...she'll see what she can do. Which means nothing's going to happen. Won't help Ashley.'

'But you got one perp out of there. Thanks to you, Ashley is safe now. Listen, Olivia, you have nothing to be ashamed of. You're a great detective, one of the best. This wasn't your fault.' He squeezed her hand again, needing to reassure her with more than empty words. 'You did great. I wish this had never happened, but you did nothing wrong.' He wasn't even sure if his words reached her.

'But I was scared, El' she added, her voice barely above a whisper. 'I jump at the sound of a car being started.'

'But that's a normal reaction in this situation. Anyone would. It's not weak. It will get better...if you get help. Talk to Huang. I mean, get help, that's what you always tell people to do.' He scooted closer yet, intertwining his fingers with hers. Her breath was uneven, her shoulders slumped. It took him a second to realize she was crying again.

'I screamed. It seemed like forever. Nobody came. He- he was going to...I screamed so much.'

'Liv...' He could feel tears welling up in his own eyes as well, his throat getting choked up. And then, the only natural thing to do, the only thing he could do was pull her into a hug. Not a gentle, tentative, awkward hug, but a tight embrace. 'I'm so sorry...so sorry...' His arms were wrapped firmly around her, and he could feel her return the pressure, her fingers on his back.

'...not your fault...'

'I'm sorry. I'm here now. I'm here.'

He could hear her mumble something, and eased up on the pressure, moving to her side with one arm draped around her, the other hand on her arm. They fell back against the sofa, her head on his shoulder. She didn't seem to mind. 'What?'

Her lips curled up slightly through the tears. 'I said I'm glad.'

'So am I. You have no idea.' He placed a chaste kiss on top of her hair.

There was nothing to be said. They were half sitting, half lying on the sofa. They could feel each other's body warmth. Complete silence surrounded them for minutes. He could sense her breathing slow down, and felt some of his own tension slipping away. Elliot wasn't usually the type to cuddle with a friend, but this could be an exception. It was comforting. As if, for this moment, nothing bad could happen. No more ugliness.

'El?'

'Hmm?'

'If I fall asleep like this...don't wake me up when you leave.'

'Wouldn't dream of it.'

**The End.**

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